This is why Escape (and especially its members!) is so good! Practical & sensible advice.
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You have my considerable sympathy with this. Here is my experience and warnings to others. I was getting numb thumb and first two fingers in both hands which I put down to cold, even at 14C with gloves and ended up stopping cycling about 18 months ago.!!! I just was no longer enjoying it. It was on the road bike, though using my TT bike on the turbo was not a problem. It made me wonder if it was my wrist position on the tops of the drop bars.
Prior to that I was getting medial nerve numbness (thumb and first two fingers) even when driving , especially in my left hand. Having had the car for 12 years it was only when driving it to be part exchange that I realised the steering wheel was offset to the right! (BMW E91 from 2010). So my left hand was more bent back than my right. (I immediately checked the car I was picking up for a similar issue and was relieved to see it was central. (Look from front and align top of steering wheel with the two supports for the driver’s headrest. fortunately the newer car had a central steering wheel and I rarely get the numbness when driving now).
I had a physio investigation and blood tests but they came back as normal. I was given some exercises, which helped when the numbness started, but not stopping the onset. I am also doing some of the carpel tunnel syndrome exercises from the Scottish NHS youtube channel which have helped.
It was slowly dawning on me that the reason was my wrists being cocked back rather than straight.
It was also happening in both hands when typing so I have since also swapped to an ergonomic keyboard (Logi Ergo K860 and ergo lift mouse). Both have helped. I can now again try to learn my Classical guitar again without finger numbness. (Again correct wrist position is really important here)
For the road bike I am raising the bars & shortening the stem to take the pressure away, and moving from 40cm to 38cm, so my wrists are less cocked back and more straight. I hope to get back to road cycling again soon. My TT wrist position is nice and straight (I have done 100m & 12hr TTs without a problem).
I hope my experience may help someone else also.
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I think this is why I love my aero bars when bikepacking, hardly any problem.
I did this on sunday. I do believe it helped actually. Ignored the left, exercised the right. I was getting left hand numbness in the climbs but not the right (usually my worst hand). It was only at the end of the worst section of downhill braking, (about a 15 min segment) that the right hand caught up to the numbness of the left. I think I will continue the experiment. I have added the other medial flossing exercises that I was doing when the numbness was full-time in November 24. Lots on youtube under medial nerve flossing. Here are the observations I made 10 years ago on what I probably did wrong the first time I had problems. No cures. Just ideas…
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Looking forward to see where it gets you, hopefully it helps! I am still working on my experiment, doing right hand only, so far it seems to work. Hopefully I will be able to say the same for the left. BTW, ChatGPT is convinced it is a neck issue because both hands and all fingers are affected, which makes sense. But nerve flossing works along the whole pathway of the nerve, so even if the issue is at the neck, it may work.
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